The Jaguar Experiment.

H

Harvie

Joined
Jan 25, 2001
Messages
76
The Jaguar experiment:

I recently bought two black Jags with inserts and plain blades. I had one I bought years ago that broke. The changes I noticed were surprising. The old blade is slightly thicker, say about 1/32 of an inch. Also the grind is different. The old blade has more material, and is sharpened from one side only, the new is less bulky and sharpened from both sides and the grind gets closer to the spine of the blade. The logo and surgical steel phrase on the tang are sharp, clear images on the old. One the new they are not as sharp. And finally the inserts have slightly larger holes on the new, but the handles are the same, so there is a gap around the "dots" on it. An overall reduction in quality, but not enough to make a difference in use.

The pins; everyone wonders what the pins are made of. They are made of nickel-plated brass. After two days, I was able to pull the pin apart with my fingernails! They were bent, and the brass was showing through, bad score marks. That’s a good thing though, as I am going to put new pins in both, along with washers. I have found 4 washers, that covers the custom job I am doing to one. I am putting the new handles on my old blade, with washers, and the old inserts. My old one was silver and black. The new ones are just black. My idea is to make this one a true custom and change the handle color to blue with black inserts. To sum it up, Custom jaguar, Combo edge blade, washers one both sides, blue handles with black inserts and solid pins. What do you think? Now if I can just get that black paint off!
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What is the best/toughest kind of paint or enamel I can get?

What if I polish to a paint free shine instead of repainting? Would it corrode? Ideas please, I want to deck out this Jag. It has sentimental value, sort of. That Jag became my trade mark feature. All my friends can tell you what knife I carry. Been through it all and back, well except for that last time.
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By the way, the tiny washers came from old cordless phones. The base intena had a fork and blade style swivel, with a washer on each side. Perfect fit too! Think Radio Shack would have them? You’ve got questions, we’ve got Alhimers.
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I need more for the other Jag. If I have to repin it, might as well do a good job.

Side note: I have a good 35mm camera, and from now on I am having my pictures put on a CD instead of paper. My next role of film will be knives only! Pentax K2 by Asahi, I think. Old as me, but still takes good pics, I think. Just got it, so wish me luck.


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“Society is safer when the criminals don’t know who’s armed.”
 
I did polish the butt of PC International and it did corode. the shine was gone in few days only. It is not that bad, not like iron rusting off because only the shine was gone but other than that it was and still is ok.

I suggest you do a re-painting or plating it with Nickel or Chromium .. then it will last longer. Plating should last longer though ..

The camouflage Rostfrei I have also got the paint scrubbed off and it also corode the same.

Have you checked Sniperboy's custom Jag for comparison?

BTW, how about some close up pics on the blade differences?
 
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Side note: I have a good 35mm camera, and from now on I am having my pictures put on a CD instead of paper. My next role of film will be knives only! Pentax K2 by Asahi, I think.</font>
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I use a Pentax Spotmatic II which is the precursor of the K500, which was the precursor of the classic K1000, which was a precursor of the K2. I think the old manual cameras are better for blade photography.

The key is digitizing the image. Most of those places that put 'em on CD don't get high enough resolution. I use a Minolta dImage Scan Dual film scanner that scans and 3500DPI. My Spotmatic and my Scn Dual are equivalent of a digital camera with over 8megapixels. The best you can get are about 3MPixels. Plus, my Scan Dual has 30-bit color depth. A lot of the time when the "pictures in about an hour" place puts 'em on CD Rom, they only give 18 or 20 bit color depth at may be 800x600 resolution.

Why? Time. It take my film scanner over a minute to scan a picture. A 24-frame picture would take a half-hour just to scan. They can't get "pictures in about an hour" at that rate.

Of course, if you don't have a film scanner, then having the photo shop scan the film for you is better than putting the prints onto a flatbed scanner yourself.

The prints you get at these "pictures in about an hour" places are pretty bad. You see, color prints remain a hand-done thing. Each one has to be adjusted. The "technicians" at these "pictures in an hour" places are in to much of a hurry and generally don't know what they're doing. Very often, blades come back looking a little green or a little red depending on what brand of film you used because this is the natural tendency of color films. So, getting a CD Rom from them instead of prints is a great idea.

Anyway, rest assured that our Pentax will be fine.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">My next role of film will be knives only!</font>
Click to expand...

One roll? I often do five or six. Enough knives have already arrived this week that next week, when I set up again, I'll do at least five rolls.

All I can say is... "Let the magic begin!"


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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.balisongcollector.com
 
Plating? How would I do that? I don't have a lot of equiptment. What does that take, dipping, spraying... what?

I try not to go to those one hour photo places. Thay don't do so goodmost times, like you said. I was thinking of sending my filf to a real lab, Kodak maybe. But I live out in the sticks, so... might take a while. I got the cammera, but no insructions. I got it figured out now though.

Were is Sniperboys' custom Jag. I have not seen it befor, but I am going to hunt it down now, or at least try.
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“Society is safer when the criminals don’t know who’s armed.”
 
Plating is an electrochemical process, something similar to anodizing. It is basically letting another metal compound attach to the material being worked on through release of certain number of electrons.. You might want to refer to nickel plating or gold plating as common example.

S' custom Jag is here:Custom Jaguar
 
Sanding off the nickel and copper layers on the Jag will reveal the pot metal beneath. It will oxidize and turn grey after a few days, like aluminum but pot metal is crap. I did it to one of my Jags and it looked pretty good. I sanded it all down in order to have flush pins like a BM... think I posted about that ages ago.
 
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~soo/balisong/article12.html

here is my custom Jag.. the handles are polished down.. if you use a buffing wheel you can get a shine that lasts I htink (I will hck again) but if you go TOO far you will see bronzing under it.. I htink it is a nice effect anyways.

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URBAN.LEGENDS.(BalisongGARBAGE)
ENGEL.DESIGN.ROOM
[FAKE01].[the mirror site](www.rejectionist.com)
Knives.I.Want
If you play with love you will be heartbroken; if you play with knives you will [bleed]
 
Umm, did I mention I can't see colors all that well? I'm not color blind, I can see colors, just no were near as many different shades. I have a yellow/green problem. Can't tell the diff. between bright green and yellow, or blue and purple, or red and brown. Its not somthing that is easy to explain to someone who can see normally.

I think I will stick with the factory inserts on mine. I'm still thinking about what color(s) to use. One blue handle, one red maybe. Or all blue or all red. Or two diff colors on each handle.

Can you do plateing at home? What equiptment does it take?

Thanks for the input people. I'm keeping with the factory inserts for now because the ones that where on my old handles fit good, and I'm trying to use as muck of the old knife as possible. Inserts are somthing I can always change later.
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“Society is safer when the criminals don’t know who’s armed.”
 
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